china crisis

(The day after the 1987 'Hurricane', Sussex)

China has just wiped out all the gains made by the rest of the world in combating climate change by its unfettered 'development'. Although a signatory to the Kyoto Accord, China is exempt (so what's the point) as it's a 'developing' country. Surely controls on developing countries should, if anything, be even tighter than on the developed nations? Otherwise it'll all run away from us? China is not 100% uncool of course, and is even developing car-less cities, but you wonder if their heart's in the future or firmly stuck in the past?

I was convinced of the reality of climate change ten years before most, as a result of the 1987 'hurricane' in Sussex. I lived on the coast where it was worst, and I was persuaded then that something odd was happening. Now I'm trying to spread the word about Peak Oil (and Peak Coal), ten years before most have heard of it! Peak Oil is a bigger threat in the medium term, especially in the UK. Apart from the storms and flooding, the UK will probably benefit from climate change (in the medium term) with warmer winters, vineyards, hot seasides and palm trees everywhere. Unless the Gulf Stream fails of course ....

I'm ready for both, with a convertible and a Land Rover!

poor fuels ...

The comics are making a fuss over the non-story that petrol's likely to hit £1 a litre this summer. Er, so? The price still doesn't reflect either its scarcity or the damage caused to the environment by burning it. £5 a litre would be more realistic, and high enough perhaps to alter peoples' behaviour and begin to affect government transport policy.

Until then it is unbelievably cheap, and we should all make the most of it while we can, because in a few year's time £1 a litre will seem like we were almost being given it for nowt.

But then the Express gives itself away by trying to quote in gallons! Petrol hasn't been sold in gallons since the 1980s and we all earned far less back then, so any comparison is frankly facetious. It was like the tosser who complained about the price of tea at the catering coach this week - nine shillings! As decimal currency hasn't been around since 1971 we can only guess how much he earned back then, and how much a cup of tea was ...

two years ago ...

I love this shot. It's Wulfric at St Erth two summers ago. We were in the middle of a South West Rail Rover trip and were about to travel up the branch to St Ives, one of Britain's finest lines.

The idiot commie Beeching tried to destroy our future by destroying our railways but even he missed a few of the branches in the west country. Today you can still travel to St Ives, Newquay, Falmouth, Looe, Gunnislake, Exmouth and Barnstaple by modern transport, even if Padstow, Ilfracombe, Bude, Bideford and many other big towns in the SW are still waiting for their trains to come back. Not long to wait now ...

hot hot hot

[Photo courtesy www.FreeFoto.com]

So the tabloids are forecasting 80 degrees by the end of this week. After a ridiculous frost and snow-free winter, a blistering summer and autumn last year, even the sceptics have melted in the sun, and we all now are aware of Global Heating.

I can't wait. A heat-hazed Britain drenched in sun, packed beaches and warm winters sounds great! And car-free and aeroplane-free to boot!

apologise - not in my name!

There was some drivel on telly today with loads of deranged looking vicars and other oddballs whining in that christiany way about 'slavery'. Am I missing the point or didn't this all finish 200 years ago? The hypocrisy of the christians getting involved in this is stunning - it was them buggers what spent centuries trying to convert Africans to their 'religion', killing their culture and proper connected (and Pagan) religions at the same time. Cast out of Europe when they'd run out of witches these nutters invaded the 'Dark Continent' determined to convert, enslave or simply murder the inhabitants, taking their wealth as they did so.

And then we hear our prefect rulers debating whether 'we' should apologise for this!! Not me Blair you christian fuck. You see, I'm not a racist, I don't share your christian guilt. You preside over a government determined to enslave us ALL, with your moronic ID cards, your fake 'terrorist' alerts and all the other rubbish you spout.

And then others whinge that we still enjoy all the wealth slavery created! Especially here in Bristol, world centre of the slave trade. Bullshit, Bristol has many poor people living in bad conditions - no home ownership here, no flash cars, no money gathering interest in foreign bank accounts. Just the hard grind of day-to-day existence with only the downfall of this 'Labour' government to look forward to - and Friday and Saturday night in town or at the local pubs.

So you can wring your hands Blair, and utter insincere tosh (how like Thatcher you are), and think you with your IQ of 128 and your rich Scouser wife can tell US what to do - but until I see you buying a round at Hartcliffe Community Centre on a Friday night you can fuck off!

la 2

When the last plane has spluttered back from the the Costa Del Sol with its cargo of cancerous millionaires fleeing rapid climate change why not visit sunny Littlehampton on the Sussex coast - before sea level rise wipes it out. For a quick tour around the town and its attractions click on the arrow. See the laughable new developments along the riverside (before they're washed away), visit some of the back alleys I used to love as a kid (twittens we called 'em).

la

This is a fun youtube offering featuring Littlehampton (LA) and its extraordinary collection of incompetent skaters. LA was my childhood stamping ground (from 9 months to 35) and it's nice seeing it's still there - despite sea level rise! To start click the arrow ...

how roads will die

We all know that cars are an endangered species and that the road network will fall apart as we enter the final phases of Peak Oil, but how will it actually proceed?

The first signs will be uncertain petrol supplies, government inaction and a slow falling-off of the number of cars and lorries on the roads. The media will start to stir everyone up with dark conspiracy theories, but there will be no conspiracy behind this, just simple supply and demand

economics. Already some of the stronger nations are tying oil-producing nations into long-term contract agreements, or simply invading them, keeping the wholesale price of oil around $60 a barrel.

Suddenly the airwaves and press will be full of 'how to manage without your car' articles and transport policy will swing away from roads and towards all forms of rail. Petrol rationing will be introduced, probably within 5 to 10 years. The very last new driving licenses will be issued around 2025.

There are plenty of stories doing the rounds about replacements for petrol, but study them closely you'll see they are flawed. Biofuel is a joke - it would never be economic even at ten times the price of petrol and land use would compete with food growing etc. Hydrogen is unworkable. Fuel cells would be very expensive, electric cars would increase energy demands so much the climate would go out of control ... cheap oil was a once in a billion years windfall and we've wasted it on frivolity.

The roads are the key - as demand falls away and 99% of us have to find other ways to get around the roads themselves will collapse. No local authority will prioritise road maintenance as climate breaks down and economies change completely. Roads will become no go areas for everything other than Land Rovers, horses and walkers. If roads survive at all it will be as multi-use leisure facilities at the fringes of towns and villages. Some may find new uses as longer distance cycle ways and bridleways, some may be lucky enough to be reborn as railways.

Because of course rail is the key to keeping some sort of regional transport system. There will have to be a HUGE expansion of the heavy and light rail network if we're going to retain any sort of wider economy in the UK (or more likely independent nations within the UK).

We have about 30 years to make the change so that there is not too much civil unrest. Peak Oil will soon become far more of a 'demon' than climate change because, of course, Peak Oil is a far greater threat over the short to medium term. You've been warned!

bring it on...

There's a general view that Global Heating has to be a bad thing. Globally of course it will be, and if runaway warming kicks in (probably on a 2 degree C rise) we'll all be fucked, but if you think of it as climate bands shifting northwards then for the UK it may well be, in the short to medium term, a good thing. Warmer winters, hotter summers, a rebirth of the UK seaside holiday, the final lifting of the dour 50s socialist mentality ... that's a good thing isn't it?

And if the Gulf Stream shuts down then perhaps the Scottish ski industry will take off, if only for 50 years or so.

Or course those tossers living at sea level will lose their homes etc, but surely these days that's their fault anyway. No-one can say they haven't been warned.

Climate Change is a global problem on a huge scale, but on a country to country basis some will be winners and some will be losers. Peak Oil will solve the emissions problem, and over 200 years everything should settle back down in a pleasant and worthwhile world, with a much smaller population, no pollution, steam trains, nice work and plenty of time for friends and family. And the final death of pointless consumerism and 'celebrity' culture, something surely all of us would wish for ...

seaside woes - but for how much longer?

More evidence that our 'betters' are still heading in the wrong direction! The BBC News today carried a sad report about how our seaside resorts are in decline.

Er ... they might be now but with temperatures rising year on year and even the most optimistic reports forecasting desertification of southern Europe following quickly after the end of air travel then the future for UK seaside resorts has never been brighter.

Sure, they'll have problems with erosion and storms and many will need to quickly restore their rail links to keep the visitors coming but why do we get this idiotic reporting from London's finest who have probably never visited a seaside resort in this country?

They'd be better off asking why this moronic government is actually planning to INCREASE air travel and the size of airports, why they have wrecked plans for tramway systems in Portsmouth, Bristol, Leeds and Liverpool, and why they have wasted BILLIONS on a USA-run resource war in a country thousands of miles away.

I was brought up in a seaside resort and still holiday in the UK whenever I can. I'll only fly every ten years, and even that is wrong. The British seaside holiday is far better than anything you'll get abroad.

So let's not worry about 'decline' of things that are going to have a bright future, let's start managing a planned decline of those things none of us need - roads, airports and crap music.

even these buggers are worried ...

This year's Geneva Motor Show is finally responding - ten years after the rest of us - to the threat of Climate Change. All the talk is of hybrids and future technology, low emissions etc. Jeremy Clarkson must be turning in his grave.

It'll probably be another ten years before the reality of Peak Oil sinks in and the car manufacturers, and particularly the venture capitalists, realise that they're in a dying industry with no future.

Everybody is now aware of Climate Change but the average person in the street is still ignorant of Peak Oil, which suits the governments fine. Peak Oil is a far more dangerous threat than climate change because we'll have to TOTALLY change our lifestyles to cope with it. Climate Change will be inconvenient, and deadly to some, but Peak Oil will change everybody in the developed worlds lives, and shatter the petrolhead illusory ambitions of billions in the Third World too.

The people to watch and listen to are not the politicians but the businesspeople who will have to make decisions now. Some of the biggest publicists for Climate Change have been businesspeople (NOT Branson!!), at the moment Peak Oil is discussed mainly amongst economists, but the businesspeople are beginning to listen. Even the investment community is beginning to incorporate Peak Oil futures into its decision making.

Investment in the future will involve buying lots of gold, silver and forests, and defendable houses on high ground and as close to the poles as possible.

the biggest con of all

The biggest con of all is the christians'/moslems'/jews' worship of the drivel of 'death'. All Pagans know that death is an illusion, a surface 'reality' that vanishes as soon as you study it.

No idea why this nonsense caught on, but I suspect it has something to do with consumerism and socialism, trying to trick us into running headlong into ambition, conformity and 'common sense'. All the dullest (and most unsuccessful) people you'll ever meet believe this monotheistic secularist rubbish. And they lead such miserable 'lives' because of it.

And before the coffin-lovers amongst you start saying that the Abrahamic Monolith Religion promises heaven and hell - these are not lives, but psychotic images of boredom and another form of death. They offer nothing.

Of course as Pagans we instinctively know how the universe/multiverse really works, that as thinking creatures we have and have always had an existence, and we always will, no matter what happens. Our spirits ALWAYS find a new home. Only if we're prats do we get stuck being Brian Merritt, accountant, over and over again. And listening to James Blunt, for ever ...

wallop!

So the socialist scumbags who use mobile phones whilst driving are going to get a few points on their license and have to fork out £60 of their unearned income from today. There's been a little bleating as expected from these deadbeats but the police seem to actually be enforcing it. I always make an obscene gesture when passing these morons in their 2CVs and lorries, no doubt as they discuss revolution and chardonnay on their Nokias.

They'll be whingeing even more from July 1st when they can't ruin decent people's lives and meals by smoking in public. A few years ago we could have told 'em to 'sod off back to Russia' but the commies have vanished there too!

Now for a TOTAL ban on smoking and an automatic lifetime driving ban for using mobile phones in cars. These buggers could also afford to pay £1000 fines ...

hippy of the week

This week's prize socialist dipstick is Fidel Abdul-Aziz, owner of the company planning to develop Lydd Airport. Ho-hum - another rich kid who looks backwards rather than forwards when deciding how to spend his daddy's money and, surprise suprise, a non-resident of Romney Marsh.

Bit of advice to Fidel - put daddy's cash into gold and forests. An airport is a silly idea for two reasons - 1) There ain't going to be any fuel for aeroplanes within 10 to 20 years, so what's the point? 2) Romney Marsh is at or close to sea level. Thermal expansion of the sea due to global heating will inundate this whole area over the next 50 to 100 years. Either way (and you're going to be hit by both) Lydd Airport has no future.

Now waddle off and go and spend your unearned wealth on something WITH a future.

would you credit it?

The incoming head of the Nationwide has suggested that in the future all bank customers will have to pay fees just for having a current account! He can FUCK OFF! This is because the banks have been charging 'unfair' fees to those customers who have been going into the red. Excuse me but shouldn't they be penalised for being losers?? Why should those of us who ARE financially competent have to subsidise these mullet-wearing, smoking, Sun reading, James Blunt fan shits?

The whole credit/mortgage/deficit finance con pushed by our idiot lefty government and their running-scared good ole boys in the USA is built on the premise that 'money' (like oil) will last forever, that the less real it is the sounder it will be, the Economist talks about the end of the cash economy and all these mummy-boy emo tossers are so PC they won't tell the truth because it'll hurt somebody.

Buy gold.

glastonbury

A trip to Glastonbury today. Not by train of course - the S&D make take years to get back there. Stuck behind old gits, horseboxes, lorry drivers, the usual loser suspects, but we got there in the end.

Glastonbury's a painful place for a Pagan. There are too many hippies, crusties, middle-class new agers and old gits cluttering up the place. Vegetarian food is hard to get, there are always far less witch and Pagan shops than you remember, and there's still a stink of christianity about the place in a few dark corners.

There was even a cafe there which announced 'smoking encouraged', probably the most loser uncool thing I have EVER seen. How are they going to survive after 1 July?? And who cares ...

But there was an upside - the excellent Goddess and Green Man shop and a superbly atmospheric pub with bad food!

But the Pagan engagement ring we went for eluded us - until we popped into Wells on the way back and in the very last shop we saw there it was - plain band, white gold and in exactly my size - and with a 30% discount!!

you pathetic commies ...

Mmmm. One of those days. The BBC had film of some French fucker whingeing because he had to pay £5 - yes five quid - extra tax to help combat climate change for his unneccessary flight to France. Fuck off mate, and all the rest of you commies and sheep that think whingeing is acceptable. Fact is the new tax should be set at about £50 and even that is too low. Air travel has to end, and end fast. It's destroying YOUR planet and YOUR kids' futures. Okay, it will end anyway over the next 20 or 30 years once the oil goes, but do we have that much time?

On the same news the new report (and these always veer on the safe side) on climate change is now forecasting at least a 3 degree centigrade rise by 2100 and up to one and a half metres of sea level rise - and this is assuming gradual melting of ice sheets rather than the far more likely sudden collapse of ice shelves. Sorry, but we're fucked if that's even half true!

And the silly story about a bunch of commies wanting to kidnap, torture and behead a BRITISH moslem soldier is just pathetic. These people are mentally ill and need to be treated accordingly. Hippies, tories, christians and commies - wouldn't the world be such a better place without 'em??

a peak into the future

It's coming, and a lot sooner than most of us expected. But it's coming in a civilized, controlled way at the moment.

That's part of the problem - the insidiousness of both Peak Oil and climate change - at least in the UK.

Climate Change - how's it actually going to work here? A few heatwaves, a few storms, the odd tornado? Probably. Even if the Gulf Stream fails it will take a few years to take full effect. We can adapt. There will be a few major incursions of the sea during storms, particularly on the east and south coasts. A few people will die, not that many. Not nearly enough to worry the survivors. Things will probably go on pretty much as before. Except, except ...

Other parts of the world are going to suffer vastly more. There will be huge problems in the Bay of Bengal, China, the foothills of the Himalayas, southern USA and Australia in particular. This suggests huge population shifts, much to Europe. This could create social problems far beyond immediate climate change difficulties.

Also famine will loom over much of Southern Europe, suggesting population movements northwards. This could destabilise the whole of Europe.

But Peak Oil is far, far worse. We are nowhere near ready for this huge change. The end of cheap energy is almost over and all governments seem to be ignoring it - at least in public. This is folly of the highest order. 'Peak Oil' as a term and a concept have still hardly entered everyday conciousness. This is dangerous. We have ten or twenty years at most of fairly cheap energy - and that's if everything stays calm, which is unlikely. We'll all need to change our lives dramatically as petrol becomes out of the reach of 95% of us.

But the really scary thing is that both of these huge changes will hit together. That's the real danger. And only a few of us are actually prepared for it.

Gold, wood, seeds, guns, friends. That's the stuff we all need to work on ...

delete the killer klown

So our mad 'leader' reckons that climate change will not lead to any inconvenienc to his darling luvvy middle class chums if he has any say in it.

'Tony Blair has dismissed the introduction of an aviation tax as a means of cutting carbon emissions, but environmentalist groups have criticised the PM.

In spite of calls for a tax to be considered from the opposition benches, Mr Blair threw his weight behind the cheap flights industry, saying that it would need a "fairly hefty whack” to cut the number of flights from the UK.

The prime minister told the Commons liaison committee that this was simply "unrealistic" and something that was unlikely to attract international consensus.'

Hmmmm. Remind me which of you voted for this poltroon.

Back in the real world of course what Tony and his chums think means NOTHING. There is no plan in place to develop oil-less planes - in fact it's almost certainly technologically impossible -so not just cheap flights but all flights will eventually end - and probably in 20 rather than 50 years.

Blair claimed that no politician would entertain a cut-back on cheap flights, but as a writer so succinctly pointed out in the Independent today, a statesman would!

four letter word

Frome has just lost yet another garage. The owners are whingeing that it's because of supermarkets, but the real reason is staring them in the face. The four letter word that they should have covered up if they'd wanted to keep customers - E-S-S-O.

What sort of businesspeople would lumber themselves with the modern form of leprosy and trade under the banner of a company that 90% of British people would NEVER patronise?

Obviously garage closures are an inevitable portent of the end of oil, but it's Esso garages that are the most vulnerable. Esso did not only spend decades perpetuating the hippy myth that climate change was not happening, but even actively supported hippy organisations that DENIED global warming. This was business suicide, and that's what we're seeing. Rather that employing communist christians perhaps they should have employed forward-thinking economists and businesspeople.

Expect Esso nostalgia on eBay any time soon.

heat

2007 is forecast to be the hottest year worldwide ever, with the UK sharing the heat.

There seems now to be a growing consensus that Climate Change is happening far more rapidly than even the bleakest forecasts. This shouldn't be a surprise. Positive feedback mechanisms are bound to kick in as the climate breaks down, we enter a vicious circle and in the end nothing will be able to stop it. Green Parties, well-meaning hippy conservatives, even survivalists will be powerless, if a little better prepared. Joint action will become impossible due to the sheer size of the problem, only individual action will save individuals. All faith in state institutions will vanish, the priorities will be location, defence and food. It's not all bad news, the long-awaited massive fall in human population will be an inevitable consequence, the old worries of good school, mortgage, debt and status will vanish, life will become harder but more worthwhile.

So meet the future with a hard head and a smile in your heart. It's going to be the best of times and the worst of times.

a europe of contrasts

The Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna.

One of the showpieces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed in 1918.

A Bulgarian village.

Today Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, bringing it up to 27 members.

Twenty years ago Europe was divided into two blocs - though both were basically socialist. Today both halves are fundamentally anti-socialist, and the better for it. The bleak days of glum leftists like Caecescu and Thatcher are now ancient history, and Europe is as united as it was prior to August 1914.

Today the Vienna Philarmonic Orchestra performed a superb concert at the Musikverien in Vienna. This return to the Belle Epoch is always a stirring event, bringing forward a confusing series of images of Europe resplendent, the Nazis and pre-Climate Change ease.

The EU is, in principle, a reasonable idea, scrapping internal borders of a continent whose nations have far more in common than they sometimes imagine. But the EU was an idea of its time, and that time was the 1950s and 60s. In reality today power should become more diverse, less centralised, less bureaucratic and devolved down to city, town and village level. Perhaps then a truly European Europe will emerge, allowing us to cope with the challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Crisis rather than miring ourselves in bureaucracy and wishful thinking.

one more nail in the coffin for the uncool

Oh dear, what a shame. This terminally uncool government does something sensible at last - raises the age of smoking from an amazing 16 to 18, though not until October 1. Coupled with the ban on smoking in workplaces from July 1 this should finish off this idiot uncool habit at last - though it would perhaps be best if cigarette sales were banned entirely.

It's not illiberal to get rid of this idiocy, any more than it's illiberal to ban murder or rape.

Basically smoking is the most uncool thing of all - worse than kipper ties, the macarena or christianity. Perhaps public humiliation of the old folk that still do it would be a good way forward, chucking buckets of ice cold water over them when you catch them lurking in their phlegm-filled council flats coughing unhygienically. I'd be up for it.

So what drives 9% of kids to smoke? Irony, idiocy, lack of self-respect or is it just the uncool lefty geeky ones who also play the harmonica, knit their own tank tops and think David Essex has something relevant to say?

should we hang our enemies?

Whilst we're in the business of hanging everyone we don't like the look of, when will the two characters here find that they're in the spotlight?

If someone can get legally topped just for killing a few hundred thousand of their fellow citizens, how much more serious are this pair's crimes?

You see, they have all the information denied to us. They KNOW the world is heading for climate disaster, they KNOW that there is no serious substitute for oil, their so-called 'religion', christianity, allows them to lie and cheat and simply repent at the last minute to wipe out what they've done.

Whilst we're scrabbling around trying to find the next meal or shelter from the next storm, these buggers will be living in luxury with stores of food all around them. They'll shake their empty heads and whine 'we haven't done anything wrong.'

Anyway, have a great 2007, keep safe, keep making money and suppressing the forces of socialism, kick a foxhunter or two, set fire to a couple of models wearing fur and keep building up your wood and gold stocks, closing your bank accounts, get fit and strong and don't buy crap music!

phew, what a scorcher!

It's been an extraordinary year with the hottest month ever in the UK (July), the warmest year globally and now an almost unique situation in both Europe and North America with temperatures closer to late autumn rather than winter prevailing everywhere. December rain in Moscow, Helsinki and much of the Alps, no snow yet in southern England, almost frost-free ...

The real losers currently are the European ski resorts, basking in unusual warmth with spring flowers already appearing. Only artificial snow on the upper slopes and gloomy rain-lashed villages at the foot of them.

But this may all be very misleading. There may still be a very cold snap this winter which'll catch almost all of us unawares, in the longer term the faltering of the Gulf Stream will probably plunge western Europe into a run of very severe winters.

The Climate Change scenario is worse than anyone has imagined already - the future looks like it's going to be a nightmare of severe weather, economic meltdown and huge population changes. But as always there'll be opportunties as well as sob stories. You read it here first!

freakish? nah ...

(1987 'hurricane', Littlehampton, West Sussex)

The most annoying thing about the London tornado is the way that many newsreaders etc refer to it as a 'freak'. It's anything but. Britain has the highest number of tornadoes (by area) of any country in the world. They're part and parcel of living somewhere where the climate is unstable. True, they're not as vicious as ones in some other parts of the world, but they can still pack quite a punch.

The important thing to remember is that we are still living in relatively quiet times climate-wise. Things are going to get much, much wilder. In the broad historical sweep stable and benign climates are 'freaks'. For much of the time the earth's climate is wild and inhospitable. We need to plan for wilder weather and prepare for it. We can't stop it happening now, we all need to adapt. Tornadoes, heatwaves, floods, blizzards, wildfires and superstorms are going to become part and parcel of everyday life for all of us.

I was in the front line of the 1987 hurricane. It convinced me (a decade before most!) that something odd was going on with the climate. It got me involved in green/Green politics. No doubt the 2006 tornado will do the same for others. 

the economist needs to get real

Like all good economists I take the Economist, but sometimes I despair at its total lack of connection with the real world and particularly the future. Economists used to have a catch-all get out of jail card which blinkered their intellectual rigour - externalities.

One would think in a post-Katrina and Peak Oil world they would have shed this view, if only through natural wastage as old fart journalists shuffle off this mortal coil.

So why the fuck is this week's issue including cover story 'Your Journey to Work? How to fix Britain's transport system'? It is joke journalism at its very worse. Classic laugh out loud line is 'First, roads should take priority over rail'. WTF??
How the fuck will that work? We should be carefully reducing the road network so that Peak Oil doesn't back foot us and send us into economic Depression. Rail is so economically and environmentally superior to road (RIP) that there is no argument to even maintain the current system let alone increase it or - amazingly - put it BEFORE rail. What are the Economist writers thinking of?

But reading the article carefully gives clues as to why they're getting it so wrong. The 'Transport Department' forecasts that road traffic will INCREASE by 40% by 2025. Yes, you read that right, increase, not decrease!! Er, how exactly? Using what fuel?? It's like the idiots forecasting INCREASES in air traffic! It is communist rubbish, and they know it.

But the daftest thing is that the article is pushing for road pricing, which as much as Peak Oil will reduce road traffic substantially. They don't know whether they're coming or going.

Economists, more than anybody, HAVE to be 100% realists because the post Peak Oil world will not be a place for dreamers and thickos. They will be DEAD, and not just metaphorically.

Cancel the Economist? I'm tempted!

the real farepak victims are our ears

All this bleating and whingeing about Farepak is really beginning to wind me up.

This was the scenario - a bunch of losers lent money (for NO interest!!) to a multi-layered company for hampers that, on average, could have been put together elsewhere for half the price. The company then diverted these idiots' money to other parts of the group that were cash-poor. When the inevitable crash came who gets blamed? Not the financially-illiterate fools that think there's a free lunch, but the business people who were sharp enough to divert the money! Communism and the victim culture is still rife in the UK. Thatcherism still struggles on despite its ousting throughout eastern Europe since 1990.

The fact is far too many people in the UK are money-blind. They spend their lives borrowing against expected future income (in an increasingly uncertain economy) and waste billions on financial products that are little more than legalised robbery.

And what are the Farepak 'victims' doing now? Borrowing from dodgy unsecured credit firms to finance their yuletides! They don't think to be frugal this year, or only use money they actually ALREADY have ... they keep jumping on the treadmill 'cos they're too thick to appreciate what's going on.And they expect US to contribute to some sort of rescue fund? They've got to be joking ...

And if our poor ears get this much grief from a minor episode like this, how high will the shrill decibels go when the roosters really come home and house prices start crashing and repos go through the roof?

under the broadwalk

I'm a country boy. I like trees and soft hills and leaves in the road and sunsets and driving my Land Rover through ruts. I don't quite get the city, even though I'm fond of Budapest and Vienna and Zurich and Helsinki. But even British cities have a sort of savage beauty, found in concrete and straight lines and watery reflections. Knowing it will all be gone soon also adds a sort of poignancy, lives and things soon to be lost to the twin perils of Climate Change and Peak Oil, a crumbling of the edges prior to wholesale meltdown. Cities are a form of art if you know where to look, and art is really all there is - which is great!



Could any of us describe this or explain it once it's gone? Again, straight lines everywhere, like something by Mondrian or Joy Division. With Symes Avenue on its way out perhaps the Broadwalk will become my third favourite hangout in Bristol - after Trin's and the Loiusiana ...



And what about this? This is a temporal displacement of the highest order - not 1976 but 2006, yesterday in fact, some of the fare on offer to the innocent and unprepared shoppers in Somerfield, Broadwalk. Lard and beef dripping anyone? I ran back to the real world and stocked up on fruit, yoghurt and Tizer. 

bleating from the holy lambs ...

The new Yule stamps are out today and very nice they are too - I bought my village post office's complete stock!

Within a few hours of being issued the christians were already whingeing that they 'aren't christian'.

Read my lips - they aren't christian because Yule is a Pagan festival idiots!!

The sad thing is that every second year our Yule stamps do have christian symbols - and if you look carefully even many of the 'secular' stamps have a bit of the invader's religion added - the £1.19 value issued today for example has a star on the top of the tree, an allusion to the so called star of Bethlehem, part of the christian myth. In previous years the 'secular' stamps often have a church on at least one of the values. Last year's 'christian' abominations even had the brass neck to impose christianity on other religions - the 60p Hindu stamp being the prime example!

It should be the good Pagans, the daft athiests and the sensible couldn't-care-lessists who should be moaning, not a minority tribe of bigots, prudes, divs and foreigners.

Let's declare that from next year Yule stamps should show Pagan imagery celebrating the solstice and the lengthening days ahead, and let's return Yule to the people that respect it, not have it snatched from us by those that just a few centuries ago thought the best way with dealing with our BRITISH religion was to burn its followers alive. 

wanton vandalism

The long-awaited and crowed about by the middle class snobs demolition of Symes Avenue, Hartcliffe has begun, with nary a protest from those who are going to be most affected by it. In a month or so this will all be gone, and a shiny new pointless Morrisons will be in its place.



This is what I call a post office, stark modernist prefabricated architecture crowned by razor wire complementing the tower block in the background, together giving a homely atmosphere of neo-classical ease with life. Will Morrison's match this? I doubt it. Will they even celebrate the Hartcliffe Riots? Look at the average supermarket manager, all pallid pie-flab, dark suits, novelty ties and suppurating moles, and I somehow doubt it. Mumm-Ra should write a song about this, vicious vicious games of Buckaroo with a chorus featuring Matthew the duck.



Wulf peers into an Iceland freezer at Symes for the first (and probably last) time.



And carries off the long-promised six pack of Lucozade like a prize.

Yet another demise of local shops for a faceless supermarket. Will the fuckers ever learn? 

ssshhh - keep this secret

We all need to tread more lightly on the earth, and I think I may have found one way of doing it!

We had a superb weekend at this place, a naturist site down in Hampshire. Everything's on the doorstep - pool, sauna, PUB! etc. Indoor and outdoor pools .. and you can buy a new caravan from £12,000 and stay all season (March till October). The pub was just a typical English pub, complete with telly and quiz machine - but no need for clothes before 7pm.

This is the secret - naturist places are not only infinitely friendlier than those chavvy caravan sites, but everything is of a much higher standard and - remarkably - often cheaper.

I could easily live here all summer, chilling out and even running the business. No need for a big house or gardens, use the Land Rover once a week (because there's an excellent village shop less than 400 metres away) and no bloody clothes washing!

Naturism's an excellent slap in the face to the christians that still try to tell the rest of us how to live. I'm already saving for that caravan ... 

werepopes

Trin had me watching Dog Soldiers last night and I still see werewolves wherever I go. We sometimes forget how strong myths are, even in a world as over developed as this, and how close we are to nature despite everything. Sometimes I can hear the wolves howling down at Longleat, when the wind's in the right direction. The forest is at the heart of the European psyche, and we'll soon be making our reaquaintance with werewolves any time now ...

the borg at bosham

Bosham was where King Canute showed his courtiers that even he didn't have the power to stop the tide. Today's Bosham residents are sanguine enough to accept that with sea levels rising and the land sinking flooding will become more and more familiar. To this end they have adapted and built the above flood defences, needed when the tide creeps up the High Street. Twice a day the road around the bay floods, many times a year the odd Londoner parks their car at the side of the road and returns a few hours later to find their car underwater.

I lived at Bosham for a couple of years, and it is a fantastic place. But it now has an air of resigned fatalism. For one day, and not that far off, it will disappear under the waves forever, as have so many other Sussex towns and villages.

But hopefully the process will be a gradual one, and the villagers will be free to move to higher ground. But the real threat of course is a sudden disaster, a huge storm coinciding with a spring tide, a Channel storm surge, another 1987 style 'hurricane'. High ground appeals more each year, and the good folk of Sussex and all of our other coastal counties will be in the front line of climate change in the UK. So visit Bosham whilst you still can, visit the Selsey peninsular, or those odd bits of Essex that jut out into the sea. Visit North Norfolk and the Lincolnshire coast. Like Canute I believe that none of us will be able to stop this new natural phenomena that is now so surely upon us. Adapt, or ... well, you know.

Resistance is Futile. 

gold and why you can't go wrong

Even if by some miracle there is not huge disruption as the twin terrors of Peak Oil and Climate Change hit gold is still a good bet. 'Modern' society is obsessed with gold as both jewellery and a safe store of wealth.

But back in the real world you really need to look at converting your surplus wealth to gold now. Bank accounts will not be safe once things really begin to collapse, the only safe way of storing your wealth is by converting it to gold. The easiest way is by buying gold sovereigns and half sovereigns. Stash it somewhere in the back garden. When things start to go awry dig it up and move to your hideaway in the country.

Now's a good time to buy. Buy in the dips, there's always a little profit taking as gold hits certain psychological ceilings. $600-$700 an ounce will look crazy in 5 or 10 years time.